I think they are also great for photo viewing, because they are easy to show to others. As the saying goes the best camera you have is the one you have with you.
Same reason I listed them as the best music players - I don't want to carry around a laptop to hear tunes. And while some audiphiles claim that they can hear a difference, I have never seen evidence that this is the case.
If you EQ your headphones, e.g. to match the Harman curve[0] to better replicate the sound of loudspeakers in a moderately treated room, you'll probably find they need a lot of bass boost. This means you have to turn everything down to avoid clipping, which hurts the signal to noise ratio. If you only listen to low dynamic range music you still might not notice it, but for high dynamic range music, like orchestral music with natural sounding mastering, you will probably be able to hear noise from low quality DACs in the quiet parts.
Fortunately, good DACs are cheap now, e.g. the Apple USB to 3.5mm adapter [1].
>Same reason I listed them as the best music players - I don't want to carry around a laptop to hear tunes. And while some audiphiles claim that they can hear a difference, I have never seen evidence that this is the case.
For playing music when I'm at work, etc., my phone sounds MUCH better than my laptop that's sitting at home.
Also, even if we really did compare apples to apples, I'm not sure how the sound hardware on a laptop is going to be any better than that on a phone.
Same reason I listed them as the best music players - I don't want to carry around a laptop to hear tunes. And while some audiphiles claim that they can hear a difference, I have never seen evidence that this is the case.